Willy Trolove: Did I ever tell you about ... the curse of the travel bore

COMMENT

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's travel bores.

There you are, worrying yourself silly about the mortgage, the job, the bills for things you don't really need and, in all probability, several offspring who are not paying their own way, and there they are, the travel bores, mouthing on about the marvellous time they've just had at the Acapulco topless jelly-wrestling festival.

For some reason it's always you they single out. You're at a party, quietly communing with your drink and trying to avoid anyone who looks remotely as if they might burst into a travel story, and across the room is a travel bore itching to find someone to monopolise for the next 13 hours.

You can spot them, the recently returned, from a mile away. They are tanned when they shouldn't be. They are a different shape than when you last saw them. If they were large, they are now emaciated. If they were petite, they knock down furniture with their extremities.

They have different amounts of hair, and it sprouts from unfamiliar places. They wear hideous things that look tribal and exotic but were probably made in China. They have a persistent groinal itch due to some species-leaping monkey disease they caught in the uplands of Borneo.

Once they have singled you out, you are doomed. Their eyes brighten. A smirk delights their faces. A panel lights up in their brains that says Target Locked On.

If you move, they intercept. If you excuse yourself to the drinks cabinet, they escort you there. If you turn away, they seize parts of your body and shake them vigorously.

If you pretend to go to the loo, they come along to help out, and no matter how long you fumble around making going-to-the-loo noises and wiggling various bits of anatomy for the sake of authenticity, they wait for you to reappear. They beam their wide smile and say "Now where were we?" before you have a chance to clamber out a window.

It's no good feigning injury. If you throw yourself against a wall to break an arm, they accompany you to the hospital, while telling you how this reminds them of the time they had ringworm in Rangoon or constipation in Cairo.

Feigning sleep is no better. Nothing is more attractive to a travel bore than an immobile audience. When you pretend to wake up, they start all over again in case you missed anything.

And they do not stop. They speak in a kind of loud whisper that preserves their vocal cords for the long slog ahead, and they pretend that the story they are telling is for your ears only, when you know that it has already been told to hundreds of poor sods just like you.

Their stories are either true or entertaining, but they are never both.

The true stories are interminably long and nothing happens in them even when you think it's going to: "And on the 15th day we woke up, and you wouldn't believe it but the countryside looked just like it did the day before, except that it was slightly browner."

Or when something does happen, it's never as exciting as the travel bore thinks it is: "And it wasn't until we got to the very top of the low and unchallenging hill that, wait for it, someone pointed out that we weren't wearing our boots."

Or the whole point of their story is to reveal a fact that you already know: "And after six weeks of causing horrific car accidents just like that one, Barry realised that in France they drive on the other of the road."

The entertaining stories are even harder to listen to because you have to pretend that you believe them when they are so obviously made up. There's no way that anyone could fight off terrorists with a backpack, climb Mt Everest backwards and have a one-night stand with the Pope, but, when you're cornered by a travel bore, it's so much easier to smile in wonder than it is to question every lie.

Why, you might ask, does this upset me? Why am I so scathing about the travel bores?

Because I am about to become one.

I'm off to the Americas, you see, in search of the wonders of the world, and if you are terribly lucky, sometime in the years ahead, you might get cornered by me at a party and I'll tell you every last thing about it.

I'll try to make my stories both true and entertaining, but if I fail, please remind me of the mocking words that I wrote about travel bores.

That way, when you pretend to go to the loo, I'll get the message.